PRESENT TENDENCIES OF INQUIRY. 289 



tempt. Partly, perhaps, a natural accompaniment of our 

 rapid material growth, this intellectual phase has been in 

 great measure due to the exhaustion of argument, and the 

 necessity for better data. Not so much with a conscious 

 recognition of the end to be subserved, as from an uncon- 

 scious subordination to that rhythm traceable in social 

 changes as in other things, an era of theorizing without 

 observing, has been followed by an era of observing with- 

 out theorizing. During the long-continued devotion to 

 concrete science, an immense quantity of raw material for 

 abstract science has been accumulated ; and now there is 

 obviously commencing a j^eriod in which this accumulated 

 raw material will be organized into consistent theory. On 

 all sides — equally in the inorganic sciences, in the science 

 of life, and in the science of society — may we note the ten- 

 dency to pass from the superficial and empirical to the more 

 profound and rational. 



In Psychology this change is conspicuous. The facts 

 brought to light by anato^nists and physiologists during the 

 last fifty .years, are at length being used towards the inter- 

 pretation of this highest class of biological phenomena ; and 

 already there is promise of a great advance. The work of 

 Mr. Alexander Bain, of which the second volume has been 

 recently issued, may be regarded as especially characteris- 

 tic of the transition. It gives us in orderly arrangement, 

 the great mass of evidence supplied by modern science 

 towards the building-up of a coherent system of mental 

 philosophy. It is not in itself a system of mental philoso- 

 phy, properly so culled ; but a classified collection of mate- 

 rials for such a system, presented with that method and in- 

 sight which scientific discipline generates, and accompanied 

 with occasional passages of an analytical character. It is 

 indeed that which it in the main professes to be — a natural 

 history of the mind. 



Were we to say that the researches of the naturalist 

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